"The world is what we see and . . . nonetheless, we must learn to see it."
- Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Fluent~Collaborative is a speculative non-profit initiative established to increase awareness of new developments in the contemporary visual arts and the ideas and issues that inform contemporary culture. We are developing innovative models for collaboration and a research program that will attract artists, creative professionals, and organizations from around the world to Austin, Texas.
Artists continue to consider new ways to see the world around us. Therefore, it is important to seek out original thinking and new perspectives and work to forge a fuller understanding of changes that reshape culture both locally and globally.
Fluent~Collaborative is a laboratory for these ideas and practices - a place where a critical and creative mix of visual, media and performance artists join authors, filmmakers, musicians, architects, poets and other diverse communities outside of the arts to enable a new awareness and sophisticated discernment of changing thought and culture around the world.
testsite, a project of Fluent~Collaborative, explores new ideas and works-in-progress in contemporary art. In a domestic setting, testsite situates itself between an exhibition space, an open studio, a temporary residency program and a private home. Collaborators, usually a writer and a visual artist, are invited to create parallel experimental projects that are germinating, or at a stage of fruitful exploration and healthy doubt integrated within the corners, shelves and wall spaces of the residence. Each collaboration hopes to provoke discussion and generate feedback from others.
...might be good, an occasional e-mail report, recommends an edited list of upcoming art related events in and around Austin. This email strives to become an independent voice whose aim is to inform interested communities about contemporary art and related events happening in Austin and its environments. ...might be good is a continuing collaboration between Fluent~Collaborative and the wider Austin community.